What on Earth makes ICANN think they can get away with this?
It reminds me of what happened to Richard Stallman and Kenneth Ritchie when Cygnus
came out with gcc3 (oops! no, make that "egcs"). As soon as there was a viable
alternative, the gcc developers ceased to have any reason to put up with KR's and
RMS's incompetence anymore, and moved en masse to egcs development -- which has since
been renamed to gcc. There's no magic in creating an internet, or
even a domain name system. Several alternatives already exist; they only lack
the ease of migration necessary for the same kind of flocking from the old to the
new. Development is ongoing. There is no more reason to hold
conversation with ICANN. Time is better spent coding and deploying infrastructure.
They should prepare to find themselves rather alone.